Light & Shadow Collide: Union Of The Blades
by Dwimor Bispell
Summary: Ocarinaverse Tale : Trapped within the Water Temple and weary of his long, arduous quest, Link is forced to engage an impossible foe, who will irrevocably change his journey forever. Re-rated to T for explicit, gory violence.
1. Prologue: The Hero of Time

**Light & Shadow Collide**

**:Union of the Blades:**

"_Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster himself. And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you."_

(Frederick Wilhelm Nietzsche)

**Prologue: The Hero Of Time**

The story laid before you here, a story of the Hero Of Time and the saviour of Hyrule, is not an account of his great and heroic acts of bravery that have been, by many a hand, immortalised in stone. Not a tale like those that have placed a lonely Hylian wanderer in the highest of esteems, as the greatest of all warriors and the champion of all our most epic fables.

It is not a tale that we hear from those who stood behind Link of the land of Hyrule; those who cheered him on and knew, with absolute conviction, that his was a cause of utmost piety and righteousness; those who never wavered in their faith in his proud stature and their belief in the strength of the shield in his right hand, the power of the legendary sword in his left.

No, this is not such a tale.

It is, instead, the story of a brief moment in the life of the Hero of Time, a moment where none of the conviction and clamour for a high cause could be found in the Hero's heart. It is a story of one who had that cause thrust upon him by powers beyond his imagining or comprehension, and of his despair at this most heavy of burdens.

And it is the story of Link of Hyrule staring down into the abyss at the bottom of his valiant heart, and the abyss not staring out into him... but reaching back up, and reaching for blood.


	2. Reflections in the Water

Good day to you all out there - howz a little Legend Of Zelda, Link/Dark Link-based FanFiction grab ya today then?

The story here came from an idea that popped into my head at random whilst re-visiting the classic game 'Ocarina Of Time.' I conceived it as an origin story for Dark Link, and it's exponentially increasing in scope - the story not only provides Dark Link with origins but will give an explanation of their connection with Link himself, though my primary goal now with the story is to explore the effects the Quest of the Hero of Time has upon the said Hero - as an entirely silent character Link is ripe for analysis - what would such a person be feeling about their involvement in such an epic quest?

In any case, I sincerely hope you enjoy, and I'll update as an when 'inspirada' strikes my tiny noggin. Peace and love people!

* * *

**Chapter I: Reflections in the Water**

The water was always cold.

It was something Link never failed to notice with every plunge, every dive, every stroke through the deep, dark depths of the subterranean Temple; that foreboding omnipresence of the clutching talons of cold in the water, all the time, no matter the time. They ran up his spine when he sank into those depths, and always he felt a whisper of a promise in that touch, that to keep him there in that darkness was all they desired.

It was with relief that he pulled himself over the lip of an underwater pool onto the dry platforms of the temple, but with what he judged to be a good two days spent within the labyrinthine confines of the Water Temple, the relief and gratitude he felt to be reprieved of those talons of ice was steadily diminishing.  
For each time he wrenched himself free of their grip, he only yielded himself to the harsh and comfortless stone of the Temple, to another locked door, another puzzle of mystifying scope that would surely send him back the way he came, in a frustrating re-tread of his iron-clad steps, searching for what key to the door or what piece to the puzzle he'd missed.

For now, he and his tiny fairy companion Navi were at the conclusion of yet another of the Water Temple's seemingly inexhaustible supply of incessant games of deductive skill. Exhaustion was, however, steadily overtaking them, and Navi's light and airy voice was heavy with it when she spoke up:  
"Surely we're close to the end now?" she said.  
Link, sitting up close to the rim of the twisting corridor of water behind them and doing his utmost not to slouch through his own fatigue, looked up at his faithful companion, who hovered somewhat erratically above his head. A pity for her bit his insides insistently, and he jutted out his right knee in front of him on the ground, which Navi quickly floated down upon to rest.

They regarded each other in silence for awhile, mutual feelings of weariness obvious to the other.

"I hope so, Navi." Link replied slowly, in a voice carrying a low rumble of duty without the passion of belief behind it, and was quickly replaced by a glowering cynicism. "We've been in here this long, what more surprises could the place possibly spring on us?"  
Navi looked at him steadily, clearly returning his pity for her back on him tenfold. She fluttered lightly off his knee and up to his face, rubbing his temple with soothing, near maternal tenderness.  
"We have to press on Link... I know it seems so very hard but we simply have to." She said. "If only for Ruto's sake. It's been a long time since we came upon her here, and the goddesses only know what has happened to her."

Link nodded nearly imperceptibly, knowing full well that Ruto's disappearance would not have meant anything cheerful for them. It was largely that which had driven them both on these long hours; the thought of the future queen of the Zoran people, slaughtered by whatever lurked at the end of the Temple's very own chained and bolted final door.  
In the midst of that dark thought, though, some slight humour came to him, in thinking of his (forcefully betrothed) fiancé's indignation at Link's seven year departure from her life – then he felt a pang for those others who had seen him vanish from their lives, replaced by hunger and bloodshed.

"Yes... I know. It's been keeping me going Navi. But, to keep going all the time, for all these people and in all these places... it's becoming so very hard to do." He looked up at his companion, strain etching shadows into his handsome blue-eyed features. It was in his voice too: "Do you ever wish –;"

"To go back?" Navi said with understanding in hers, still soothing. "To the forest? All the time Link, always. I miss those days. Flying through the trees, overlooking the lights from Kokiri fires, looking up to see the moon shining down on the treetops? You, me, the Deku Tree, Saria..."  
Another pang invaded Link's chest at the mention of Saria, in the midst of the ever-so-brief warmth the reminiscence of the forest filled him with. He thought of the Deku Tree, dead and gone, and of Saria, who could only watch over the verdant greenery and never return to fill it with her own smiling light...and of Darunia, who would never return to the city beneath Death Mountain to see his son again.  
Navi clearly saw it in his face, and she was quick to assuage him once again.

And in her concern for him, and in his weariness for his task, neither one of them noticed the shapes that swam stealthily beneath the water... obscured by the blackness of the depths, but seeing their prey in their singular red eyes with absolute clarity...

"I know you wish for the time past Link. I do too. But we will never have any semblance of that past ever again if we don't carry on with what we know we must do. You've come so far as it is already – you were so young when you took on Queen Gohma and won! You took on an ancient menace like King Dodongo and Volvagia and you won again! I know what you can do, Link, and I have my own faith in you, Link. I've seen with my own eyes what you've done and I've helped you do it too, the whole time." Delicately she reached out and raised his sinking chin with her tiny but strong hand, meeting him eye to eye.  
"And I believe that you can keep doing it."

He looked at her, loyal and faithful partner in this monolithic adventure, for a long moment.

And in that long moment, he thought of what he had done. Leaving the forest that had been his childhood sanctuary to embark on a quest he knew so little about, running in the vast Hyrule field without the shelter of the leaves he had always known, stricken with terror by the ceaseless waves of skeletal apparitions that had pursued him in that cold black night. He saw Lord Jabu-Jabu, and felt the slimy brush of the parasites in his belly as they slithered forth to greet him with open tentacles. He saw Ganondorf, towering above him atop his steed, black as the storm-cloaked night he cast his predatory eye through in search of the Princess of Hyrule.

And as he thought on these things and so many other things past in his journey, he wondered what other horror would burst from the shadows below to ensnare him, and regard him with its dead eyes as a thing to grip him harshly in its clammy white hands and rip the life from him with inexorable patience.

And in the midst of that thought, he glanced sidelong at the water, and his eyes widened in sudden and all consuming surprise.

The first Tektite reared up from below the surface of the blue with a whooshing splash and a shriek of hideous hunger, drowning out Navi's shocked cry. With its spindly, discoloured legs it launched its sickly arachnid body from the pool's edge at Link, but he was already ahead of it – the Master Sword curved downward straight from its sheath in a broad arc, and the severed halves of the loathsome monster fell to the ground in a spurt of greenish blood that splattered the walls and burned Link's eyes with its acridity. He noticed not, however; at first sight of the creatures all fatigue, all doubt, all other thoughts left his mind, replaced with a warrior's absolute focus. With the first Tektite dead at his feet, he crouched into battle stance, shield raised and sword ready, as the red-eyed spiders swarmed from the water towards him.

They leapt at him as their compatriot had done, and with the brutal poise he knew only in these moments he sent them reeling backwards with spraying wounds or falling, twitching, to the ground, dead. One scuttled up towards him with alien speed and as it reared with its mouth agape, the Master Sword plunged deep into its eye. The Tektite went howling, blind, back into its multitude, overwhelmed by the oncoming charge of seemingly dozens of the beasts. Link fought with a focus that came to him only in moments where battle locked, and the cries of the maimed and eviscerated spiders were blocked from his ears by the sheer might of his concentration. But the swarm was one of strength in its vast numbers, and with every swing the Hero of Time jumped further and further back down the stone corridor to avoid being completely overwhelmed himself.

Deflecting an attack with the brunt of his shield, he swung his sword arm down and pierced the hide of one of the monsters, impaling it to the floor with the blade. But as he did so, another one of the creatures leapt up once more, and Link toppled backwards as it collided headlong with his chest...

...Link hit the ground with a resounding, resonating thud and without a pause pushed himself up into a silence he did not in the slightest expect. Disregarding this sudden alteration and pushing the sword out before him, in an instant he had readied himself for an attack that never came and could never come, for now he found himself... somewhere very different from that dark corridor indeed.


	3. The Stage Is Set

This chapter was great fun to write - largely based upon descriptive passages, and directly drawn from/inspired by the Dark Link Battle Arena in the Water Temple in 'Ocarina...'

I was aiming to be a little bit along the lines of Steven King here, suspense-wise, and as reviews are welcome please not me know if I succeeded! All opinions on the writing are welcome, please review!

* * *

**Chapter II: The Stage Is Set**

The Tektites had vanished, presumably behind the door that now stood, sealed by all-too familiar iron bars before him, embedded into a wall that stood far higher than the corridor he had last felt himself standing in. The partition was an enormous marble barrier, but it was not as the azure walls of the rest of the Temple were, pure and unblemished – the marble was stained and smeared with dirt and grime, discoloured from what must surely once have been shining white, and the entire structure seemed to be crumbling... no, decaying as he gazed at it.

He spoke, confusion clamped tight upon his voice.  
"How the... when did we end up in here?"  
"Link." Navi's voice was sharp, and he heard his own bemusement reflected back at him even more strongly in her reply. He spun to face her, hovering behind him – and all thoughts of dispelling his confusion vanished, as it crashed down upon his eyes again in what he saw.

The room they stood in did not seem to truly be a room, for no walls stood around them that they could see, with the floor of the vast space stretching out into a pale mist for who knew how far and a fathomlessly high ceiling that seemed as finite as the mist below it. The floor that stretched out into those ethereal lengths did not truly seem to be a floor – water, not deep and shadowed as before but clear and bright and astonishingly reflective, covered the ground right across the room, and straight across from where they stood was another tall, marble structure, but this time it was an unsullied, untainted white – there was no tarnish or imperfection on the glowing stone. Set in its midst, too, was a door, locked tight with the same bars as those behind him. The mist even went far back behind that white structure, as though if he were to look behind it he would see nothing but that fog stretching farther and farther on.

But it was what was in the midst of all this that drew Link and Navi's eyes.

A tree, so thin as to be skeletal, stood on a patch of sand in between the doors. No leaf, no fruit, no bud, no blossom nor bloom was on it; it was dead, held still resolutely erect by the mortification of its few branches. And it was reflected in all exactness within the crystalline, clear water.  
It stood, even in obvious death, and its reflected counterpart stood equally resolute, in equal death.

Link gaped out at the expanse set before him, his eyes unable to absorb what was set before him; such was the enormity of what met those blue eyes. He had never encountered anything like this on his journey, nowhere so very...antithetical to the place where just a few moments ago he had stood and fought.  
"Navi..." he breathed, unconsciously echoing her earlier exclamation. He could say no more, stunned as he was, but Navi heard the unspoken question in his stumped tone.

"I... I haven't a clue, Link. I've never seen anything like this yet... and how did we end up here anyway?" She asked, bewilderment running through her voice. "One second we were fighting and then...did you see the door we came through?"  
Link shook his head. He had not even seen the door in the periphery of his vision, but it's very real existence behind him (made all the more absolute by those immutable iron bars) surely meant it had been there. Had he been that caught up in the fury of the battle as not to notice it?

Then another thought came to him, and for reasons he could not explain, a chill passed through him alongside that thought.

He hadn't opened that door on his own.

It had been waiting for him, open and ready to seal once it had him inside.

As though he had fallen straight into the jaws of a monster.

He shrugged it off almost immediately, dismissing that profound disquiet as best he could. The Water Temple had thrown up an inexhaustible menagerie of tricks and surprises in the two long days they'd been wandering around inside; it stood to reason this was simply another of it's bizarre assaults on his already tired consciousness.  
That was what he told himself. But that feeling, which had slithered away from his spine and now rested in uneasy slumber in his innards, would not pass away.  
He shook himself mentally, then drew his body up to its full powerful form, trying to project a resolution and a calm he did not quite feel outwards.  
"Well, I suppose I brought it on myself, wondering what else this place could do to us... what do you think then, Navi?" he asked, trying to assume an almost chipper tone. "To the other side?"

Navi looked at him, and for a moment he thought he saw some small flicker of deep pride in her tiny expression. He was pressing on, through his weariness and in the face of the unknown, and he knew she was smiling at his resolution. Perhaps it was because of that set determination that he missed the concern that also brushed her features, concern for what was behind that front.  
But they had no time to worry about that for now. And she reflected his tone herself, trying her best to hide her confusion at their surroundings.  
"Only way to go, Link." She chimed.  
"Then onwards we go!" Link said, confidence suddenly exuding from his voice. He strode forth; towards the brink of the stone he stood upon...and stopped, just short of stepping into the radiant water before him, looking down into a likeness that stared back at him, the merest apprehension visible on both faces.

Navi waited, watching her companion silently, waiting for him to take that step into the water. As he did so, it did not escape either of them that Link shifted his weapon cautiously in his hand. He was not quite prepared to allow the possibility that there was nothing lurking under the brim. That first step out into that wide pool, however, brought no monsters up, but only served to further befuddle them.  
His leather boot sunk not an inch below the implacable surface, but rather it rested on the top of the water as though he was still standing on the hard and immovable stone as before. The ripples that drifted out from beneath his soles were miniscule in their circumference, and within mere moments they had vanished without trace, returning the water's surface to unshimmering stillness.

Link stared down at that unyielding surface for a long, long moment.

Then he gathered his determination, and began walking slowly across the water, Navi hovering along above him, the Master Sword never returning to its sheath and his shield laying on a vigilant guard at his right arm.  
They went ahead without speaking, looking around into the mist that surrounded them, a mist that was not oppressive in its opacity but quietly sinister in its silence. With each of Link's booted footsteps there was a soft _plink, plink, plink_ noise, reverberating quietly back upon them though the walls, where the echoes were surely coming from, were lost deep within the haze.

That dread feeling that Link had felt back at the door was not abating as he walked.

It was building.

All his semblance of calm remained upon his face and in his stature but he felt it draining from his mind with every single _plink_ noise. The closer they came to that island, with that dead tree, the greater his apprehension became – the more he felt like he was walking closer and closer to something, some _thing_ that would open it's shadowed jaws and consume him when he made that one, fatal step too near.

It was drawing nearer and nearer now, as though it was drawing him closer to him. That dead tree stared at him in utter and total quiet, and as it grew larger and larger in his vision it seemed to beckon, with those rotting branches, to him. To come closer, closer, _closer_, to stand under its gaunt form and stare up through the shadow it cast, under its emaciated limbs and stare up at it in fixed, abject, unshakeable terror...

They passed the island, and the tree passed out of the periphery of Link's vision, and the feeling faded with it. A form of unusual relief spread through his body, as though he had passed under the eye of some watchful, terrible creature and escaped unscathed from its indifference to him. He began to pick up pace towards the door across the room, moving quicker and quicker until he stood on the stone ground set before it.

It was here that all the confusion, the caution, and the damp fear engendered in their crossing gave way entirely to the exhaustion and exasperation that had filled the two companions only minutes ago.  
Link wrenched at the door with his gauntled hands, and sliced the iron bars with the Master Sword in a shower of sparks. He smashed the Megaton Hammer against it with all its considerable might, and dropped Bombs and watched from a distance as they exploded harmlessly against the solid obstacle. All the while, Navi muttered spell upon spell at the stoic door. Nothing they did so much as dented those immovable bars.  
After several long minutes of this fruitless endeavour, Link stopped suddenly, sheathing his blade, unable to think of anything else, much less able to act upon another thought through the slowly growing haze of anger within his chest and his mind. He leaned his forehead against the unyielding exit, gripping his fingers around the iron as he tried not to ball them into white-knuckled fists. He could feel building rage pulsing through his body, offsetting an edge of seething fury that he did his utmost to suppress.  
"There was nothing back there, was there?" He nearly snarled through grinding teeth. "No switch, no Eye, nothing?"

It was not a question, it was a statement, an invitation for the fairy to agree with him and share in his rising frustration. They had been locked in, and nothing had presented itself as a challenge, neither creature nor puzzle, to overcome and be granted release. The jaws of the monster had eaten him after all, but it did not intend on chewing upon its prey anytime soon – it was going to swirl it around in its mouth for awhile.

Navi tried to soothe him, once more, with her voice: "No, Link... but I'm sure that if you keep look-" But this only served to infuriate him further.

He slammed his fist hard upon the bars, in an act of futile, directionless rage. Ignoring the dull, throbbing ache that sprang up in his hand nearly instantly, he roared a curse at the top of his voice at the locked divider, and Navi flew backwards away from him in alarm. In that moment, all thought of getting through the door, of retaining his outward appearance of solidarity and composure, all thoughts of his quest and all the consequences thereupon had fled from his mind at the fury of his cry;

"And this is it, isn't!? We're trapped in a place that a legion of soldiers haven't yet managed to survive, and in their _infinite wisdom_, the goddesses send a – single – goddamn – traveller!" he bellowed at the unmoving marble, punctuating his words with vicious, pointless strikes of his fists against the sealed exit way. "This is where it finishes, is it, the Quest of the so-called Hero Of Time?! I CAN'T FACE ALL THIS WITH JUST A SWORD IN MY HAND!"  
He crumpled, from so many forms of weariness and anger, against the door, still smashing it with horrible force.

"I CAN'T KEEP FIGHTING ON MY OWN!"

"I CAN'T SEE ALL THESE PEOPLE FADING AWAY!"

"I CAN'T DO THIS!"

His last blow echoed the loudest through the impossible expanse, and then he was quiet, his anger slowly subsiding, slowly diminishing into a dull ache, one that run much deeper than the one that coursed through his hands.  
And as he lowered his clenched fists to his sides, he thought again of that journey, so tirelessly, endlessly long, that lay before him before, stretching out into infinity like the mist in the very place he stood within. He saw himself wandering the path the goddesses had placed him on, wandering so very far and never catching that joyous sight of journey's end. Now it seemed that because of a simple magical lock, he would never even emerge out into the sunlight, and drink in its warmth, ever again.  
He did not want the journey's end to be this. Alone in an alien setting, with that gnarled and wizened tree hanging above him.

As his anger abated, he closed his eyes, guilt and regret further gnawing at him for his rage at Navi's words.

"I'm sorry, Navi." He whispered. "But if this is it... if this is where we-;"

"Link." Her voice stopped him dead. He did not hear what he had expected – hurt and reproach for his outburst, pity and comfort for what he felt, as Navi always did. Instead, he heard shock in her voice. Alarm. Incomprehension.

And cold terror.

He looked up at the fairy hovering above him. She was quivering madly, her body gripped by the fear that gripped her voice, and she was staring back out towards the middle of the pool.  
Link swung around and upwards, whipping his sword and shield from their scabbard and clasps with great speed. His eyes followed Navi's, and he stared out at the island, but he saw only the tree, old and decayed and... and...  
(_the water was always cold_)  
Link felt the icy talons brush his spine once again, as though he had dove headfirst back into the Temple's depths.

A shape stood at the foot of the rotting wooden edifice, a figure with a lowered face shrouded in shadow that still glared out at him through eyes that were an unmistakeable bloody red, glowering at him with concentrated malice. It was tall, athletic and lean, and it stood in a stance that rang some indefinable bell in Link's consciousness – the same for its clothing and the shield upon its back, which he knew he had seen before –

He realized. In that instant, a shock not of fear or horror coursed through him, but one of something he had never yet felt or ever expected to feel as he stared into features that rose up to face him fully.

A tunic, not green but black as night.  
A shield, shaped as the Hylian Shield exactly.  
And a face that, despite the deep, dark linings that crossed it, was all his own.

It was a shock of recognition.  
He was staring at himself.

It smiled, and Link saw a glimmer of two shining fangs set amongst those familiar lips. It spoke, and Link heard in horror a voice he knew all too well.

"Welcome, Link... welcome to journey's end."


	4. Out Of The Infinite

After a brief absence, I'm back with this, the latest chapter - quite the tough little bastard to write this one was. As anyone reading this has no doubt noticed from the previous chapter, Dark Link has popped up, and he's been giving me quite a bit of grief - having to introduce him, describe him, characterize him and set him on his own thematic story arc whilst all the while focusing on how Link himself handles the situation proved a right git to get written down.

Still, I'm very happy with the result, and Chapter 4 is well on the way. I hope you enjoy this chapter, and please leave any reviews you may!

* * *

**  
Chapter III: Out Of The Infinite**

Link's mind seemed to have entirely ceased functioning. Chills of horror were dancing up and down his spine, and his brain felt as though all the water in the temple had been forcefully wrung out of it, such was the impossibility of the thing that stood before him.  
That it was... _him_ was beyond a doubt, no matter what his uncomprehending eyes told his disbelieving mind. The figure before him had his tall, sinewy figure, wired with concealed but strong muscle. It had his shock of long, flowing hair erupting from its tunic cap, and the tunic itself was as his was, loose-fitting, tapering off the extremities into pairs of high leather boots and tough leather gauntlets he had seen stretched out in front of himself so many times. It had that diamond shaped shield, just as he did, slung over its back.

And it had his face. His face, with his pointed, youthful, even handsome features and set, bright eyes.

But it was not entirely him he saw reflected before him. He now stared hard out across the water, at all the aspects of the creature (for Link knew of no other way to define what faced him now), each detail jumping out to further overwhelm his mind. It had his build but stood with a proud stance that Link had never known himself ever to take. That shock of hair was not his deep, golden blond but a pale, ashen black, and the tunic it wore was the deepest, darkest shade of deathly black, a blackness that drew the eye inwards like a consuming maw.  
And the face was his, yes, and yet it was not. Shadows hung across the face, lining all the striking features and shrouding them in a horribly ghostly fashion. He saw the flash of those fangs again as the creature leered at him again; saw the eyes bore into his own, considering him.

Those eyes were not his.

He saw such malevolence in those eyes, a hunger for something, a hunger for _him_ in the deep scarlet of those eyes. They shone out of the depths of those murky linings in the face, as bright as his own blue ones but bright with what Link had seen many times in a myriad of other countenances.  
Bloodlust.  
Perhaps it was the sight of that in those crimson orbs that did it. Link forced the shocks of recognition and disbelief from his mind, and once again all his weariness and frustration departed his body as he thrust sword and shield out before him in preparation for whatever engagement he was certain was to come.

But he could not entirely remove those impressions of incredulity from his thoughts. Perhaps it was that, which blunted his instinct to attack, and what prompted him to call out to the creature in a voice that demanded an answer, an explanation, a reason why, what, and how:  
"Who in the goddesses' name are you?!"  
That smile, that fanged and hungry smile, widened just a little. As though he had extended it a friendly greeting, it bowed to him, the arms spread out and the legs crossing in a gesture that was in no way formal – like a mocking invitation. All the while, the eyes did not leave Link's own, as though they were fixed, locked, in place.  
"Me?" It said, and Link felt his skin prickle as his hair stood on end. That voice, low and soft spoken, was all his, and that small vocalisation unnerved him even more – it was as though he had addressed a mirror and discovered it to be speaking back to him.

"Shadow." It stated in a whisper, its teeth glinting through its almost snarling lips.

"Or rather..._ the_ shadow, Link. The shadow dwelling in all vessels of light, in all creation. But most especially..." - here is savoured the two words, cold hunger hanging about them like a permeable mist – "_your_ shadow."  
Link felt the words pierce through his ears as though they were composed of shards of ice. Whatever meaning was in them was lost amidst in the all-consuming dread that pulsed in him now – dread that spoke out volumes despite the _sotto voce_ intonation, that the creature before him had not yet attacked but that, as he knew from that craving in its voice, it so clearly desired not a thing else.

Above him, Navi had found her voice, and Link heard it ring out loud and steadfast over his head – the tremor in her tone had vanished as it always did when she called to him in the midst of battle.  
"Where have you come from?" She demanded forcefully to the thing before them, in a manner that suggested no incomprehension on her part. "And just what are you?" She's not letting this get the better of her, Link thought to himself, and through his haze of fear he felt a wish emerge to be able to do the same right now, and hardened his battle stance further.

Those red mirror eyes flickered rapidly from Link's own to Navi, and he saw them stare at her, regarding her as though she had interrupted an intense, private conversation between the two of them. Just as quickly, they flashed back to Link's face, locking in place once more, and it addressed him as though he had voiced the questions.  
"A hidden heart, that's where, from the hidden of him displaced by time." Abruptly it's grin widened, and as though it had been granted more room to express itself, as though it had been released by the widening maw, its voice rose in volume, and all the formality departed it's tone, and Link heard what must surely have been amusement in its place. "If we're going to be specific here, _your_ hidden heart, Link, and that displacement has left you unpurged still. Something that I'm sure that you'll come to understand by the end of... all of this.  
"As to what I am, I just told you... twice now. But let's just say what I am is only – "

The gauntleted hands flew upwards and back down again in a singular fluid motion, and as Navi yelped a cry of warning and Link raised his shield in lightning-fast defensive reaction, he saw it bring down its own Hylian Shield into a practiced posture, and he heard the _schrring_ noise of a sword slip forth from its scabbard, saw the shining silver blade move down in its left hand to match against the shie...

It was the Master Sword. It was holding his legendary blade in its hands.

"– a reflection." The creature finished, bluntly, while as if in contradiction to his tone a sword that should not exist gleamed sharp and bright across the space between them in the finite hall. Before this further impossible blow could truly strike Link and sink into him, it spoke once more.  
"But you, Link, may call me Dark Link. Wonderfully fitting, I know you'll agree... soon enough."

Whether it was because of these simple, incredible words or from the sudden threat of the impossible weapon now unsheathed and ready for battle, he did not know, but from that moment, once again, his fear and his uncertainly flew swiftly from his body, and he felt the assurance that combat brought on beginning to fill his body, heating him, slowly melting the coldness that this thing had filled his body and mind to the brim with. It mattered no longer to his mind what this so-called "Dark Link" was – it didn't matter even why it stood there in his image, shrouded in shadow and darkness lining it's features. What mattered was the conflict he knew was coming, knew it as the two of them stepped forth, and crouched as though ready to spring, swords and shields set in symmetry between them.  
They would fight. That was what mattered now.  
And yet, that curiosity refused to depart him entirely. It held him back, kept him prowling in a circle as his shadowy opponent did in front of him, and prevented him from leaping forth and striking as he otherwise would have unquestioningly done. He could not wade into this contest without answers from one whose very appearance rang out impossibility to his eyes.

"Well then, Dark Link," he said in a voice that had been loaded with a hotness, a hardness now that a fight loomed before him, "I suppose that Ganondorf deserves due credit for spawning something like you. I don't think I quite imagined he'd be so desperate to see me defeated as to send a replica to do battle with me!"  
At this, Dark Link let out a sharp burst of laughter, a sound full of black amusement and as penetrating as the cold of a Freezard's breath.  
"He'd deserve it, Link, if I was of 'his design.'" he said, the last two words spoken with scornful venom, his grimace at Link's declaration shifting back to that hungry sneer. "Oh believe me, I know of Ganondorf...I've got the best possible source of knowledge about him – your mind is quite something to get inside of, Link. But no, I -" and he offered the smallest, mocking bow before shifting back to a combat position, "- am something else entirely. Ganondorf hasn't quite the capacity to think of something so _personal_ as me. If you're looking for somewhere to place due credit for my birth into this world, well... you've got a mirror right beneath your feet, my dear Link."

Link was not so taken aback by these words as he might have been – distrust filtered Dark Links words and left no shock upon his mind. Why he was continuing to wish for some explanation from this... this... _apparition_, he could not explain, for he would not trust the words that emerged from the jaws of a monster that by its own admittance was one from a realm of darkness. But still he did not strike.  
"So you're not a part of Ganondorf's sick imagination then?" He said, almost tauntingly. Above him, Navi was also clearly unbelieving:  
"So where are you really from, then?"  
"I just told you that." was the soft and instantly disregarded response on Dark Link's part. "But if you don't believe me, you'll be shown the truth soon enough. In any case, matching weapons with you, Link, after all this time at last... I can't _wait_ to see how this goes."

And just then Link thought he saw something, in those bloody eyes. Just for a fleeting instant, before being masked once more by that deep, avid bloodlust, he thought he saw something else.

Was it a flicker of relief that he had just seen in those eyes?

"You've faced up to this task of yours extraordinarily well, you know." Dark Link said, bringing Link out of that momentary reverie and back to the arena, where the two Link's circled each other like hungry Wolfos before a clash. "I know, better than even Navi here. The defeat of one of my shadow kin, the one within all the paintings in the forest... what a victory that was! When he was so very close to casting you down, as well."  
(_Phantom Ganon...how does he know so much?!)  
_"And the two beasts, in their red sea beneath the mountain, who could've seen you defeating creatures such as those with no army at your call?" He said, with something that was not pride in his voice but something closer to building anticipation, and at his words Link saw the forms of King Dodongo and the dragon Volvagia in his mind, towering above him with fire spurting from their monstrous, scaled jaws...  
"You know Link... they're enraged at their defeats at one Hylian's hands." Dark Link's smile shifted, and his fangs were bared and gleaming now. "Perhaps that's why I'm looking forward to this so much. How appropriate for one such as me to put so bring an end to your quest, wouldn't you say?"

However this creature, this Dark Link, knew about those battles past, Link neither knew nor cared. At Dark Link's last words, Link shifted his posture suddenly, openly inviting attack. He spoke, his voice utterly hardy now:  
"Just like you said, my _dear_ Dark Link – those creatures I defeated. They were agents, beasts of Ganondorf's creation and they're lying dead and gone now. They've been slain by my hand, and by the Master Sword." As he said this, he raised his weapon a little higher, and it shone with a glow of steel.

They stood for a long time, and the two of them stared at each with the same silent, stoic expression set upon their identical, handsome features. Regarding each other, like a man regarding his mirrored reflection – their postures, their weapons, their builds, their countenances, their every aspect in this infinite, ethereal hall of crystalline water the same in all exactness as the one who stood opposite the other.

And finally, Dark Link spoke. He spoke in a manner that knew all too well what was to come for the two of them.  
"Slain by the Master Sword." He said, in that voice that was alike to Link's in every way.

He extended his own sword, his own impossible blade of legend, out before him.

"Then Link, the Hero of Time...master yourself."

They charged, their leather booted feet splashing in the upholding water with crashing echoes. And as Link sliced his blade downwards and Dark Link slashed his upwards in movements that were the inverse of each other, the twin Master Swords locked with a noise that rang throughout the fathomlessly wide and high arena, in which they now duelled without mercy, without pity, and with identical, untempered ferocity.


	5. Union Of The Blades Prelude

It's been tooooooooooooooo long since I last submitted here!  
Haha after submitting the last chapter to this story in the late summertime of 2008 (using the Arthurian landscape of Tintagel, Cornwall to get some inspiration), I'm back to get the tale back on track in time for Christmas!  
Getting back to this story was like a breath of fresh air - this chapter I took utter joy in writing again, and I hope you good reader take whatever pleasure you can out of the raving ramblings I try to pass off as writing below.

This chapter is in many ways an action chapter, with the term 'Union of the Blades' being explored in one of the two ways I have created it to mean - the most literal way here, with Link and Dark Link locking blades and commencing in a brutal, no-holds-barred swordfight. Hopefully I've managed to develop the character arcs of the two lead characters to a sufficient degree - but that is for YOU out there to decide!

Please send any and all opinions/criticism/scorn you wish to send, but I hope you enjoy this brand new chapter as much as I did writing it!

* * *

**Chapter IV: Union Of The Blades [Prelude]**

The confrontation that the two combatants now fought was one that, despite the incredible travels and merciless conflicts he had fought through, was of a nature Link would never have imagined he would ever face; an impossible matching in the most literal of senses, facing off against an opponent who mirrored each and every single one of his physical features, an opponent who by all rights should not even exist, let alone draw a weapon so very like his own against him, and challenge him.

But Link had neither the time nor the inclination to ponder upon these remarkable notions, for his heart, his body and his mind were locked, as one, within the war he known fought with his extraordinary counterpart, all his concentration, his awareness, his focus, his very being, poured into this encounter. As with his battle with the Tektites and all the battles before, he knew no distraction nor impediment to what his honed and keen senses told him, such was his skill and dedication to the art of war.

At this moment, it was a skill he needed very, very much – for Dark Link fought with an intensity that equalled his own beyond doubt.

He swung his blade, shining brightly for joy at battle's commencement, upwards in a rapid slashing motion, which Dark Link blocked fiercely and riposited with a horizontal cut that Link ducked just in time, the imposter sword missing his billowing tunic cap by mere millimetres. Crouched below the arc of the attack, Link stabbed fowards with brutal force, but that attack too fell short, as Dark Link recovered with extraordinary speed from the momentum of his swing and launched himself away in a graceful backflip, the Master Sword cutting unfeelingly through nothing but the cool air of the unearthly arena.  
The two mirrored opponents, poised to strike in the space of a breath, circled each other again, as though they were locked within a reflective axis that allowed for nothing else within their scope of vision but each other. To Link, nothing else even mattered beyond what the lithe figure, _his _lithe figure, unreal as it was, before him. Dark Link's eyes told him, shouted to him in their intensity, that the fixation was mutual.

This time it was Dark Link who broke that circle, and leapt forth, bringing his blade down in a massive slash in tandem with his leap, a move that Link recognised so well as his own that the astonishment at seeing it replicated so powerfully nearly saw him cut clean in half – he barely raised his sword in time to parry the manuevre  
(_his manuerve_)  
away in time. The blackened blade sliced down against his face and Link felt the sudden shock of icy steel against the flesh near his temple before his block forced the blade to the side. Blood streamed from the wound into the unmoving water in a small gout, and Link cried out in pain. Feeling its clinging warmth flow slowly from the cut and ignoring it entirely, he raised his own sword and brought it down with unerring speed, taking advantage of Dark Link's exposed left side now that his blade and shield had been forced aside, taking the advantage to land a blow to the head. The Master Sword missed it's target – Dark Link shifted backwards away from the attack with astounding speed – but it slashed deep into Dark Link's left forearm, and the cut sprayed yet more deep red splashes into the implacable, ever-reflecting surface.

He saw Dark Link's face only for a moment, filled with pain at the wound, and even in that moment he saw it fade from that face so like his own, replaced once again by that absolute and total concentration. They locked blades once more, their wounds soaking their tunics and caps with steadily darkening, bloody stains.

At this, Navi, who had previously hovered above almost paralysed by shock at these bizarre turn of events, unable to call to her ferociously sparring partner, suddenly swooped down to his aid, regaining her senses to cry:  
"Link, he knows! He knows what you're going to do, how you're going to attack! You need to –"  
Navi's last few words never escaped her lips, merging with horrible abruptness into a chilling shriek of pain. Dark Link drove Link's sword arm downwards with a vicious thrust of his own weapon-clad arm, and before Link could raise his safeguard, could react, could do _anything_, his doppleganger swung his own darkened shield high in the air and slammed its unyielding edge, full-force, into Navi's fluttering form.

The fairy flew, now unsupported by those delicate pale wings, fifteen feet across the arena, smashing into the gnarled and rotting tree with an crash so terrible in its volume that it surely could not have come from so tiny a form. She fell without ceremony to the sandy isle on which that unearthly shape stood, and Link saw, through the haze of horror that was growing within him like a mire with terrible rapidity, those frail wings wilt, and lay still.

And before Link could think anything further, he looked around at Dark Link, who was not looking at the fairy he had just horrendously removed from the battle's course. He was looking at Link, and as eyes of blue and crimson met, Dark Link pushed his face close to Link's, so close that there was...  
"Nothing else, Link." Dark Link whispered, in a voice that was soft.  
Soft, and... why was it no longer so cold? What did he hear in that voice just then?

"Nothing. The way it should be. You and me, fighting _our_ fight, with nothing to distract from the union of our blades." And Dark Link grinned.

Pain worse than even the most severe sword wound and rage like ravaging fire invaded Link's chest in a flood. He forced his pinioned arm upwards in an act of sheer violent force, pushing Dark Link away and, roaring in agony for the fallen fairy, he attacked – and his first strike hit home. The sideways slicing motion caught Dark Link on the chest as he stumbled backwards, and once again Link saw a red spray fill the air as the wound, not as deep as a focused attack could have made it, spurted madly.  
Dark Link's shout of terrible agony was followed by his own fury – he recovered faster than blinking and drove himself back at Link a tenfold harder than he had yet , and the two blades rang out in the fathoms of the arena as they exchanged merciless blows, blocking and holding, pivoting and dodging, striking and charging, slashing and hacking.

It went on – for how long, neither of them could not say, so immersed where they in the terrible battle they waged, so locked in each others' so very different and yet so very alike gazes.  
Navi had been exactly right in her final words within the battle; Dark Link knew what he was going to do, and could riposte with deadly effectiveness through moves that Link recognised all too well as his own. Perhaps that was what was saving him from being sliced clean in two by his opponent's terribly precise skill with that impossible blade – he knew his techniques so well, was so refined and learned in the art of war that _he_ could see what _Dark Link_ was going to do next.  
Unfortunately, they were far from matched in this engagement.  
Fatigue was wearing Link down, a fatigue that was attacking his frame as unrelentingly hard as the assaults from his impossible foe. In his mind, body and soul, in all of these he felt an exhaustion as primal as the will that drove him with the force of a spear thrust through combat. It was an exhaustion born of the unending, twisting depths of this claustrophic Temple and their myriad trickeries, of the strain of battles fought and sometimes nearly lost, of the suffocating crush of the deep blue waters behind him.

It was an exhaustion born of all the full weight of this burden. And now it may just be the exhaustion that would see him killed.  
For his opponent, while he seemed to share everything else with Link, was encumbered by none of that terrible fatigue. Far from it.  
Dark Link fought with vicious tenacity, but his attacks were not the wild and enraged swings of a furious Stalfos or some other black-hearted creature – he was controlled in a way that forced Link to summon all his will and strength to defend himself against and strike back.

Even this was not enough.

Link raised his weapon high above his own steadily bleeding profile, warding off a ferocious blow from his counterpart – and as he did so, as he called what he all too quickly realised was a bluff, Dark Link pulled his weapon back and swung his whole shadowed form downwards in a sweeping circular motion, kicking out with his booted right leg. The attack took Link's own limbs out as completely and as violently as if they had been rent from his body by a sword swing, and he felt himself lift up off the ground into the air. There was the briefest sensation, only the briefest, of flying through the air  
(_is this how Navi feels?_)  
and then he crashed down hard onto his side, his weapon slipping free of his shuddered hand, onto the crystalline, unyielding surface of the water.  
He barely had time to register, much less cry out at, the screaming pain in his surely fractured ribs, nor the chill touch of the water against his dripping wounds, when a leather bound grip locked upon his shoulder like a vice of iron and rolled him forcibly onto his back. As the dampness spread swiftly across his tunic, the cold once again dancing a Kokiri polka up his spine, and he saw the eternally rising heights of that impentrable mist, that hand forced his shoulder down, trapping him under its weight.  
It was then that something else appeared above him. A dark shape through the hazy confusion of the pain of the bruises and the batterings and the pulsing flow of blood from his wounds, a dark shape through the fine mist of a vision drifting so close to the outer rim of consciousness, a dark shape obscuring all sight, all thought, all of all...

It was the face of Dark Link, above his own and consuming his stunned and straining gaze in his own fiery  
(_what is that passion I can see there?_)  
countenance, and Link could see nothing more and nothing else. And it was then that Dark Link knelt above his fallen counterpart, legs astride his prey as like a ravanous Dodongo savouring it's capture and the meal to come,  
(_yet so soft... his hand holding so soft upon my shoulders..._)  
and that unreal, blade pressed  
(_so...gently?_)  
to Link's exposed throat, and it's steely touch was oh so very, very real indeed...

"My Link, my dear Link... I can see their point now. The way you fought, like a fire raged in your blood from the moment you're grip tightened upon your weapon! I was right, Link. You've faced up to this task of yours so very well." The smile was there, above him, with mirth in its fanged glint.  
"Considering how you've never seen fit to face up to _yourself_ up until now, you've made a fair attempt at the challenge. But I understand, Link... I understand how hard it is to face the very essence of your character, your spirit. When your spirit has done such terrible, horrific things in it's quest for some higher purpose... I see how impossibly difficult it must be to overcome that."  
And finally, at these words and through the dreadful red pulse of agony that coursed through his skin, his flesh, his blood and his bones, Link realized that, even in this position of great danger, beneath the blade of this mirror foe above him, the answers were close at hand for this unfathomable situation.  
"Wh-What... what are you?" He growled, feeling the shadowed blade's edge press unyielding against the movement of his throat, and blood from his wound dripping steadily into his mouth, running in a stream across his parched tongue.  
"Really?"

Dark Link was silent for a very long time.

And when he spoke again, when Link's sight had cleared somewhat as his forced his warrior's focus to wipe away the distraction from his vision, Link heard something else  
(_what terrible remorse is that?_)  
mixed into Dark Link's tone.

"I'm everything you've ever been Link, since this Quest of yours began. But I am everything you've ever been that you have never acknowledged, in this battle for some high and mighty and noble cause, for the peoples of Hyrule. I'm everything you have never allowed yourself to see, to think upon, every deed of darkness that you have never admitted to yourself that you have committed."

"I'm you, Link."


	6. From Whence I Came

It's been awhile (again) folks!

Well, here it is, the penultimate chapter to a story I first conceived of almost two thirds of a year ago. My most sincere apologies go to all those who read and enjoyed the prior chapters and have had to put up with my piece-meal way of writing the story - such things as finding a secure job in the worst economic recession for decades now has taken up an enormous amount of my time and leisure time is hard to come by, not to mention the ability to concentrate on such things with those more unpleasant concerns pressing down on me haha!

All my thanks for those who have exhibited such great patience - I hope you enjoy this chapter, because returning to it and completing it turned out to be an absolute joy for me, as I felt I've connected with the emotional core of both my characters better than I've ever done before in any writing, Fan Fiction or otherwise. Remember, reviews/critiscisms/scornful messages are always great to receive, so please drop a review if you can. Hailz again to you ALL!!

* * *

**Chapter V: From Whence I Came**

There was no sound for a very long time after that.

No echo in the unending fathoms above and below and at every side, for a very long time after those softly spoken words sliced into Link's madly beating heart.

No hushed whisper of inquiry. No resounding clash of blade against blade. Not even the ripple of the water as it swirled, gentle in its ebb and arctic in its touch, against Link's flesh through his tunic.

There was no sound for a very long time after that.

The two men stared, from forced supplication and superior footing, at each other in that total silence, and as Link lay forcefully pinioned in the former position he felt those eyes  
(_MY eyes_)  
boring into his own with a crimson fire that seemed to be stripping away all his defences with their brilliant and terrible glare. There was power in those eyes, a fighter's power – the glint of strength and force and intent that he saw in the eyes of every beast he had faced so far. Before he had seen those eyes blacken and fade.  
_(before he had made those eyes blacken and fade)  
_But it was not that which was so dreadful in those eyes above him now. That was a front – a front of fortified, genuine strength – but a front he had seen before.  
He saw something else behind that strength.  
Dark Link's words had not been of any real surprise to him, no matter their ominous import – what other answer or explanation did he truly expect from a foe that fought in a shadow of his own flesh? No, it was not the words themselves at all.  
It was the pain Link had seen in the scarlet eyes of Dark Link, a mere shadow of pain, of horror and of grief that smouldered in their fire.  
Had he ever seen such an agony in the eyes of any he had yet faced?

It was he, Link, who broke that silence. And at the sound of his own ragged, gasping demand, all the sensation he had forgotten so completely as the two had stared each other down with stony countenances returned anew – all the pain of his cracked and agonised ribcage ground back into jagged gear, and every wound seemed to pulse fresh blood as if in that face-off they had been momentarily capped and now abruptly re-opened anew.

His statement was a simple one.  
"You... are not... me" he croaked through biting, aching pain, tasting blood once more.  
Dark Link continued to stare for only a few moments longer.

His reply was a simple one.

"Perhaps not quite, Link."

His next movements were so sudden Link barely had time to absorb what had happened until he was consumed in their effects. The iron grip on his shoulder was suddenly relinquished, and with vicious, harsh swiftness the gauntleted hand was a fist thrust into his upper torso. Pain exploded outwards in piercing bolts through his shattered midsection, he felt his sword fall from his spasming hand, and now there was sound in the hall – the sound of the scream, ripped from his throat even as he ground his teeth against it, as it shot to the heights above and disappeared in the mists.  
"YEEEEARRRGGH!!!"  
Dark Link did not remove his clenched hand from where he had struck for several seconds, and it was with slow deliberation that he returned his hand to Link's own shoulder, pinning it down once again. Through blue eyes close to watering with the concerted effort of dealing with the menagerie of pains coursing through him, Link saw those flaming red ones lock into his own once again.  
Above him, Dark Link spoke once again, his voice as harsh as it was dreadfully slow.  
"Link... what was that notion of yours? That half-formed, untenable _absurdity_, that I'm a spawn of Ganondorf's blinkered vision? For your own sake it should be one that you've abandoned at this point, Link...it's an estimation of me that could see you killed very, _very_ swiftly."  
The grip tightened.  
"I'm something that Ganondorf hasn't the mind to conceive of, nor the power to bring about into this world. He is a man with a more limited scope than you credit him with, my dear Link..."  
Link felt it again. The fear.  
That horrible, crawling, creeping fear that he had felt as he had approached that awful dead and rotting tree, as he had approached something of undefined yet most real significance, that near panic brought on by an unknown quantity.  
He did not want to know what Dark Link was anymore. Hearing the answer petrified him to his core.  
But Dark Link was going to tell him anyway. And he was going to make sure that Link listened to every single word. Link could see that terrible intent etched all across that near-mirror of his own face.

"Don't be afraid, Link," he whispered, and Link felt his terror amount further still...  
"Don't be afraid...what things I have to tell you..."

"I have been here...in this room, this place, whatever and wherever in Hyrule this is, for a _long_ time. And I've seen things... such things as you should have seen, Link, if you'd ever had the heart to look as I've been forced to do. If _any_ of them had ever had the heart to look, my dear Link, but none of them have."  
Now something else was slowly penetrating through that vice of terror that his counterpart's hands held him in, like the flow of the water through the clenched fingers of the black gauntlet. Confusion was once again creeping through Link's mind at the words, blunting the knife edge of the fear.  
"Maybe you'll be different. But I hardly live in hope of that." Dark Link growled through the slightest of fanged smiles, and he pressed his weight down further upon Link's own shoulder, as the other grunted against the pressure and his breath came in ragged gasps from the pain of his wounds.  
Dark Link paid no heed to his own battle scars, the gash upon his forearm and the cut across his clothed chest bleeding steadily along with the movement of his breathing, heaving and groaning with the exertion of holding Link a supplicant beneath him.  
"You see Link, I'm not the skeletal soldiers or the ravenous wolves who crouched in the shadows, in their temples and their lairs and their caves drenched in their victims' blood, awaiting your arrival on orders made over seven years ago."  
He snorted. There was no mirth in the sound.  
"Creatures that have been lusting for your head as a trophy only as long as Ganondorf has entrenched them in those forsaken and defiled chambers, you count me as one of those? I've been with you for _so_ _much _longer than that."  
Link gagged hard through the terrible severity of the pain in his ribs, and he felt a sickening gout of his own blood spurt from his throat as he coughed.  
Through it, he forced a reply from his lips.  
"Then – _harrgh -._ you know I won't be... going down easy..."  
Dark Link's lip curled in a smile. His fangs glinted again.  
"Brave words for someone in your position, don't you think? Foolish ones too."

In an instant, the hand had left his shoulder again, and suddenly Link's vision exploded in a starburst flash and the accompanying pain hit him like a thunderbolt from Dark Link's punch to his temple. His neck snapped backwards, and all his resistance to the dominant figure above him collapsed as his head splashed into the water and his arms dropped, limp, into its chill by his sides.  
"And... I don't think_ I_ had finished speaking."  
The voice in the mist above was going to make him listen to every word.  
"I told you that Ganondorf is a man with a blinkered vision and a limited scope for the... _wonders_ of this world. And I don't think _you_ quite have the scope for this yet Link...for what I truly am."  
(_the pain in his voice...again..._)  
"Ganondorf is a man, and his existence has been a brief one – even with the powers he gained seven years ago, he has only walked upon this realm and the next for a instant, in time's everlasting span. I've been here since before his reign, before the Gerudo tribe bore and raised him into the world, before their dynasty began, before even the Hylian's kingdom you have come to know came to be, Link."  
Dark Link's face was slowly moving closer to his now...he could see the shine of his scarlet eyes through the haze...  
"I'll make this simple for you, Link...  
"There is something in this land that has been here before all else had come to form and organisation, something nameless. It's the reason we have faced each other today, the reason I have watched your journey and all you have become in that time, the reason I exist _at all_.  
"It's a being older than all the good and evil in this world, Link!" Dark Link cried, and now Link heard the confounding agony in his voice as clear as the clash of a blade. "People...warriors and peasants alike, folk from all times and places, so many of them have encountered it here. They faced it here, Link, in the hall you're facing it in NOW."  
And now their faces were so close the tip of Dark Link's nose glanced off his own, and he felt nothing but pure, cold terror at the next words that his impossible doppelganger growled.  
"In the HELL you're facing it in now."  
(_are those TEARS in his eyes??"_)  
Link had barely the time to register that, the sight of what surely must have been the bright, shining glimmer of a bitter, anguished tear in his opponents eye before it was blinked away and now a terrible grief stung every word from his doppelganger's mouth –  
"It's a being, Link, that has watched every hidden heart in the land since they first set foot upon it, and has seen every horrific deed they have ever committed – every act made of corruption and deceit, every hateful and malicious thought, and _every. Single. Cold-blooded. KILLING."  
_Those last words were spat with so much venom, so much agonised regret, so much terrible horror that Link nearly cried out, nearly begged for it all to stop, as his terror and his torturous wounds threatened to engulf him completely... and as a _pity_ for the being above him that he would never in a millennia have expected to feel from within him burst forth from his madly beating heart, the being spoke again, it's voice hushed and quaking.

"This room, Link... it's nothing more, nothing less than a purgatory. A place where Light & Shadow Collide, and where so far I've seen the shadow triumph again and again and again. You ARE facing yourself now, Link, where they all faced themselves when they came to this Temple, lusting after whatever glory or treasure horde they believed, through myth and legend, that it might hold. Where they all died, when they had to face the reflection on themselves that this place can conjure up. When they had to account for every one of their crimes and violations against each other by facing the embodiments of those acts."  
He snarled, and the sound was like that of a wounded animal, and Link wished he could shut his ears away from that terrible sound and live in blessed silence again...  
"That's all it is Link. I told you, I was you. And I am. I've been with you and I've watched you as you slaughtered and mutilated and killed _everything_ that snarled and bared it's teeth to you rather than extend its arms in greeting or in a desperate plea for help."

A tearing chasm opened in Link's heart, and let loose a scream in his mind that was utterly inhuman.  
It didn't stop for the longest time.

"But...but, those creatures!!" All his physical pain had now gone far and away from his anguished mind, and now he tried to articulate those awful screaming protestations and could only splutter hoarsely through the dripping blood at his mouth;  
"The Stalfos and the dragons and the Gohma, even those Tektites, they attacked ME!"  
Dark Link bellowed, and with that same blinding swiftness, he wrenched Link bodily up off the shimmering floor, and as he raised himself to full height from his crouch, he swung his previously trapped opponent through the ethereal air to land with a bone-breaking crash against the stoically immovable corpse of the tree. Link was conscious of the flight for only a moment; in the next, he found himself rolling across the sand through fresh agony, past the glimmering body of his still comatose fairy companion at the tree's root.

For a moment, he wanted it all to end. Right there, with his wounds bleeding freshly into the water and onto the sand. He wanted the cold steel of that impossible shadow blade to run him through and end this terrible misery, for the yawning, gaping tear in him to close uo and the screaming inside his mind to stop.

He simply wanted peace.

Just for one moment.

But no such blow came. And as Link clambered slowly to his feet, waiting all the time for his life to be ended in the swift strike of a sword, his counterpart only watched him, his breathing hard and ragged, his fists clenched around his weapon and shield, and his face  
(_so alike, that face_)  
contorted with indescribable pain and terrifying fury.  
"And what did you THINK when you fought them, when you drove them back – what Link?!" he screamed, and his scream was terrible to hear.  
"Did you think of the people you fought for? Who had sent you on this quest?!!? Was that what was in your mind, in the heat of the battle? WAS IT?!!?"  
Tears that shone bright as Goron diamonds with their bitterness were streaking down Dark Link's face, as his teeth ground and gnashed together like a furious Dodongo ready to pounce and devour the quarry that had harmed it.  
"You thought nothing, Link. That's what you thought. You've cut your way through creature upon creature and never once... never _once_ have you ever stopped and looked at yourself, what you're doing to yourself, Link. You've demolished a legion, an army, of Ganondorfs beasts, and you don't even do it because you believe it is right"  
His doppelganger swallowed, as though trying to force back those furious tears, and Link could not have wrenched his own blue eyes from those red ones if he had all the power in the land.

"You never looked back, Link. You've never washed your sword of the blood that soaks it in every waking moment. You don't think, when you fight. Instead...you call upon the darkness within you, and you stand impassive as your sword rips another of his soldiers to pieces. Every day, you commit murder in your heart."  
Dark Link's voice had slowly lowered in volume, as though he was trying to reign in that awful anger behind a twisting and contorting visage. He stopped, and for a moment, there was silence one more in the chamber.  
As tears seemed to well up in the corners of his own eyes, and as he did his best to force them down, Link spoke one more time.  
"They...are the servants..." he coughed, not knowing what to say, as though trying to catch an argument, a riposte, from the mist itself...  
"they are the servants...of _evil_..."

Dark Link gazed at him, and his face had become terrible in the clash between rage and pain and forced impassivity.  
"What difference does that make, Link... when the Hero of Time, fighting to destroy the shadow in the world for the good of truth and kindness, compassion and virtue, has let his own darkness fight for him, to maim and murder and slaughter with that unstoppable intent... that impenetrable commitment to war?"  
Blood, deepest crimson in colour, dripped from the pulsing wounds of the two men standing off from one another, and struck the water's surface together, the _plink_ unnoticed by either. Nor the mirrored image of the two shimmering ripples, slowly spreading from the drops in the water.  
"You've become the perfect warrior, Link. Killing, and even _enjoying_ that killing, is your business now. I know. I've been alongside you all your life. Just imagine when this War ends, Link, and the purpose you say you fight for is done with, and the land of Hyrule is saved."  
"How wondrous that would be, were it your true purpose anymore... but it isn't. Your purpose is to fight. And when the fighting is over and done with, when you have no more use for the blade at my feet right now, you'll have only yourself and the memory of how you fought without pause, and the horrible truth will be that you will be that you cannot live without that focus in your life."

"You don't fight for Hyrule, Link, and if you are truly honest with yourself, in the heat of battle you forget that purpose every time you swing your sword into another's skull."  
"You fight, just because that fighting and that killing is all you know anymore."

That chasm, that gaping maw within Link's maddeningly beating heart, that black hole deep within him, had become something that would consume him whole, so very soon. He could feel it.  
All the distraction from his wounds that had come at the shocking touch of Dark Link's words was nothing to this. He could no longer feel those slashes and lacerations, no matter how deeply they stung or how much they bled his own hot blood from deep within them. Every crack in his rib seemed to have vanished, every blinding pain from colliding with the surface of the water and that implacably dead tree had gone – all these things, the soft weight of his tunic and the hefty bulk of his shield at his arm, the warm leather of the gauntlets on his hands, the chill touch of the water through his tough boots, and even the endless mist and the reflections in the pool beneath him, they were all of them gone.

It was only him, and this impossible man before him.  
And that black hole in his heart, eating him alive.

He spoke, and his voice, rough and weak at resisting that black hole within, sounded unreal to his Hylian ears.  
"Then why does all this have a creature of shadow in tears?" he asked in a defeated whisper.  
And he saw something that truly amazed him.  
All the hatred, all the anguish, all the fury, all the bitterness and all bloodlust left Dark Link's face as though they had melted away completely, and a look that was nothing less than an abject plea of the soul shone through the glimmer of those tears in his eyes.  
"Because I've been watching you become the monster that you've been trying to fight against all your life, Link."  
"I have had to feel every little slice of pain you have ever experienced in your life, and I've had every bit of darkness in your soul that you used to fight back against that pain poured into my own soul, in preparation for the day we'd meet, this day. For the day your own darkness would overcome you."

He paused, for only a moment.  
"No more, Link. With your death, it all ends, and I can have peace from the torture that's made me."

As the words left his lips and disappeared into the mist around them, Dark Link hooked his boot underneath the hilt of the Master Sword and sent the blade spinning and twirling across the water towards Link, and as it splashed to a halt as his own feet, Link saw his counterpart raise his sword and shield into battle stance once more, the tears blinked clean away from his face.

"Soon it will end, Link. Soon, we'll both have that peace." He muttered, softly.

And then Dark Link, sword raised high into the air to bring down in a vicious killing strike, charged at Link, with all the blazing fire of years of pain and misery and longing in those deep red eyes glowing brighter than anything Link would ever see in his life.

* * *

Once again, a million and one thanks to anyone who took the time to read this tale, it will be ending soon enough, that I can promise! And remember, a review of any sort is most welcome!


	7. Union of the Blades Requiem

I've updated a new chapter in the space of a few days as opposed to months! I must admit, I'm a little scared myself...

Haha in any case people, I hope you enjoy this chapter because writing it has instilled me with hope once again for my meagre writing skills, not to mention re-ignited my love for 'Ocarina of Time', the game I regard as one of the greatest works of fantasy in any medium, ever.

This chapter is significantly shorter than the previous installment, but hopefully no less potent! For anyone who enjoys reading the tale, the end is coming soon - please drop me a review and let me know what you think so far. My hearty thanks and hailz to you all again, enjoy!

**

* * *

**

**Chapter VI: Union of the Blades [Requiem]**

It was a mere three seconds that passed before that dance of death erupted into full flow once again. Three seconds spanned the moment that the shadowed mirror image of Link of Hyrule, launched himself from his warrior's posture towards the Hero of Time with footsteps crashing like thunder from the blackest storm cloud, to the moment that he brought a sword that should not exist swinging downwards with murderous wrath.

Three seconds. To Link, a man still of youth who had traversed up and down the highest mountains, through the densest forests, across the widest plains and now down to the bottom of the deepest lake in the land, who had walked over most of his known world for months upon end with no respite and no rest, those three seconds should not have felt so akin to three separate eternities, but they did. And in those eternities of time as his doppelganger charged him with that intent etched into those scarlet eyes, he thought many things at once.

He thought of the blood on his hands in the first instant.

He thought of the carnage he carnage he had wreaked upon the creatures in the Dodongo's lair, high up in Death Mountain's treacherous cliffs and crevices. How he had bodily forced the Lizalfos that had leapt upon him from the shadows into the lava pits surrounding them as they duelled, and he remembered with such clarity how they had let loose such high-pitched screams of torment as the boiling molten mass swallowed them whole  
(_and how you smiled that it was the end for them_)  
and burned them to ash. He thought of forcing those Dodongo's, unperturbed by the strikes of his Kokiri blade, to ingest the Goron bomb flowers lining the walls of the cavern. He thought about the moment after he had leapt clear of what was to come, and the relief  
(_the joy, the pleasure_)  
that had come at the sight of the greedy beasts exploding from inside, at the sight of their blood drenching the walls in a black green torrent, mixed with the chunks of brain matter, slivers of bone and shreds of innards forced outward from the explosion. He thought about the Tektites swarming their way across the blue walls of the corridor behind him, the skeletal Stalfos troopers of Ganondorf's elite guard, the drooling wolves and screeching, flapping bat-creatures and how he had encountered them all and torn them to bloody shreds with a focused determination that blocked out all other thought, all reason, all purpose except the battle itself, and the death of all who challenged him.  
It was not regret for the deaths of evil creatures, animated by darkness, that filled him in that first second.  
It was regret for the people he had forgotten in the midst of the fighting, for the faces he brooded on only when he walked across the world and his sword was sheathed. For how he had let them down with that forgetfulness. For how he had not honoured those he loved by truly fighting for them for a long time now.

He thought of those faces in the second instant.

It was of Saria that he thought first. Of the lilt in her voice that was so alike the whistle of the Ocarina she had bestowed upon him years and years ago, and how she had fought back tears at his departure from the forest even as she glowed with pride at the knowledge of what Link had been chosen to be. He recalled the look in her bright green eyes, months ago now, as she implored him to carry on for the sake of Hyrule, and the smile on her lips that spoke more volumes for her gratitude at his bravery than words ever could have done.  
(_could she have ever know I would have come to this?_)  
He remembered Malon, and the simple peace of the ranch nearby to the Hylian borders, peace as homespun and warm as the wool from their flock of sheep. How close that ranch stood within Ganondorf's reach, and what power he could extend through that reach should he deduce that the ranch only feigned fealty to him, and what retribution he could exact upon them should he discover the flock of refugees hiding in the barns, formulating plots against him...Link thought on what honour the real driving force behind his actions gave that brave woman and her family and could not bear what his mind said to him. He thought too upon Darunia and Link of the Gorons, and how they had depended on his heroism twice now – as had the King of the Zoras who even know awaited the one he believed the hero of his people to claim righteous victory over the darkness in the depths of the defiled Temple... to rescue the Zoran princess who desired his hand  
(_soaked in blood you so enjoyed shedding_)  
in matrimony.  
And he thought of Princess Zelda, the heir to all the lands of Hyrule.  
Of the quest she had charged him with and that he had accepted with steadfast belief and conviction, conviction that she too had possessed, in the belief that his heart was pure and would see him through to his goal.  
And it was not regret that fuelled him anymore.  
It was illumination, a remembrance of the entire reason that he had set out from the foot of the Deku Tree, dead and gone in quiet peace, across all of Hyrule and back again, through days, weeks, months and years of travelling and fighting. Of the people he fought for, who believed in him still, wherever he was in the whole wide world of Hyrule.

He thought of them in that last instant.

It was not righteousness he felt in that final moment before Dark Link's blow swung down to strike home and split his skull in half. What pride he'd ever had in his great cause over the past years he did not feel anew, and he felt nothing more than sheer repulsion at the notion that all those people, beaten and enslaved by the Evil King in a tower built atop the ruins of Hyrule Castle, held one so unworthy as him in such high regard.  
What he felt was the hand of his shield arm contract into a clenched fist.  
What he felt was the realization that there existed no other, in all the wide and wild lands of the world, who had the divine mark of destiny forever etched upon their hand. That there was no-one else to take on this burden and that if he fell, all would be lost to shadow and war forevermore.  
That he had never felt less worthy of that great cause in all his life mattered no longer. If he was to fall here, today, then all Hyrule would fall into dust, into ruin and into despair along with him.  
And the pain that Dark Link had suffered through every moment of his waking existence would be inflicted upon all, in every realm and dimension and plain of reality in imagination.

Three seconds.

Link let his knees collapse beneath him into the icy touch of the water, ignoring the shriek of pain that shot forth like an arrow from his splintered and shattered ribcage, and as the shadowed sword above him whistled mere millimetres past it's intended target of his head, he closed his gauntlet around the hilt of the Master Sword, and offered a silent prayer to the legendary weapon from the bottom of his very soul.  
(_that it will end soon. By the Goddesses, may it end soon_)  
Dark Link whipped around faster than the blink of an eye, his face alight with a determination that Link felt course through him once more. And as their swords met in opposing, symmetrical slashes once again, as battle was joined once more, the red and blue eyes of the combatants locked together, there was a promise that passed between them, as though through the union of their blades.

No quarter given.

Not in this, this collision of Light and Shadow.


	8. The Conquering Shadow

Well, here I am ladies and gents of - the final confrontation between Dark Link and Link is spread before you here for your good edification. My heartiest thanks to anyone who reads this even in a cursory fashion - I'm immensely happy with this chapter and I hope you will love it as much as I do (my my how much I adore my own work heh heh!)  
All my hailz go to you all once again!

**

* * *

**

Chapter VII: The Conquering Shadow

**CHAPTER FOREWORD**

The encounter between these two foes, deep down in the silent black depths of the ruined and defiled Water Temple, is perhaps the most extraordinary of all the battles and engagements ever fought in the entirety of what will become known in the history books as the Imprisoning War. The Hero of Time is prophesised to have been chosen by the hand of destiny and the shrewd eye of fate, a lone fighter possessing the sole power, wisdom and courage to take on the evil that has pervaded and deformed the land. That there is a force in the world that has created the inverse image of the Hero, with such equal might flowing through his dark and shaded body, is a most remarkable thing, a marvel to rival all the power of the Six Sages.

That this entity has fashioned a blade of matching strength is, then, perhaps not such an unusual thing to behold.

The Master Sword, the weapon of legend said to vanquish every evil force that its bright and shining steel may ever rend asunder, is supposedly an artefact crafted by the divine hands of the Three Goddesses themselves, with each of the almighty creators of the world imbuing it with the same unique magic that would shape the very landscape of the world itself.  
It was Din who forged the sword itself, fashioning a blade of lethal sharpness and unbreakable steel.  
It was Nayru who gave the weapon its shining edge and glowing tint, bathing it in the enchantments that would cast dark forces aside through the sword's swing and heft.  
It was Farore who laid the spell of destiny upon the Master Sword, sealing it in a pedestal at the heart of the world to act as both lock between dimensions and key to the power of the goddesses, the Triforce, itself, ensuring that none but the truly worthy would ever be able to pull the blade free.

All this is said, passed down in hushed legend and superstition, of the Master Sword. But because of where this battle occurs, in a secret place where reality is curved into new shapes and dimensions are bridged, nothing is said nor ever shall be said, of the Shadow Sword; the blade wielded by Dark Link.  
No-one will speak in tones of philosophical musing or of deepest reverence and fear of the shadow blade, the weapon that, from the moment of the appearance of Dark Link into the realm of corporeal being, is the only physical object in the entirety of the world that may rival the sheer force and power of its divine counterpart. In all the years to come, all throughout the land, none shall know it has ever even existed.  
Except one.

Link, born of Hylians and raised under the watch of the Kokiri, shall never forget the Shadow Sword for the rest of his life.  
It is, after all, the sword that may just end that life of his forever, very, very soon.

**END OF FOREWORD**

He rolled through a maddeningly, terrifyingly indistinct haze of chillingly cold water and concussive aftershock from the blow dealt to the side of his head by a vicious swipe of Dark Link's shield – having forcibly wrenched up his own shield arm in a partially successful block, the strike had not quite incapacitated him as Dark Link had clearly hoped to achieve. But as he leapt up from the surface of the water into fighting stance once again, ignoring the by-now crushing sensation in his abdomen, the pounding _thump thump thump _of his own pulse and the delirious cloudiness of his vision did not help him in the slightest, and it was only by the grace of his own reflexes that he avoided his opponent's next horizontal slash – the weapon missed his head by mere millimetres, instead embedding itself in the perished edifice of the tree that had stood, throughout all this, on a morbid silent watch over the two.  
Link shook himself free of all these impediments, refusing to acknowledge the splinters of pain in his innards and blinking his eyesight clear,  
(_seeing, for once, what you fight for_)  
and returned the attack in a series of rapid cuts and stabs – Dark Link, unimpeded by the distractions Link was, blocked them with equally swift deflections with his darkened shield, extricating his sword from the tree with a great wrench of the arm in a matter of seconds. Link, his vision beginning to clear and the first signs of a skull-thumping headache mentally forced away, leapt forward with a downward slash of his own to take advantage of his counterpart's momentary loss of balance – which Dark Link embraced fully, avoiding the slash by allowing himself to tumble down and away from the attack, rolling backwards and righting himself again with fantastic haste. The two regarded each other for the briefest second, in which Link saw that brightness shine like a fireflash in Dark Link's eyes and in which he saw the eyes of Ruto, imploring him for his aid and for his comfort...  
...and then they recommenced, charging headlong into each others' slashing blades.

Once again, it came to be that the two of them forgot how long they fought for, their blades locking and parrying and slashing and stabbing over and over again. But this time, for the first time in the longest while, it was not the battle that consumed Link's heart, his mind, his body and all his soul together.  
It was not as though he was unfocused upon the two-man war he was now once again thrust headlong into – he was too well-trained a warrior, too instinctively skilled in the art of combat, and too proficient a swordsman to have lapsed into lackadaisical missteps and distracted errors in judgement. It was simply that, after so long a time spent fighting in bloody, hellish combat bereft of purpose in his mind, the words of his counterpart had struck him to the soul harder than a blow to the face with the Megaton Hammer. He saw all those faces in his minds' eye – everyone who had ever believed in him, had cheered him onwards to the final victory, had laughed with joy for his coming and wept with sadness at his going. Every one of them flashed through his mind every time the flailing and hacking swords shined with the ethereal light of the hall's surrounding, impenetrable mist, and, as though he had himself been pulled from the haze of the gore he himself had spread upon the walls of the Temples past, it was the thought of all those faces that spurred his attacks to press on and his shield to remain steadfast.

Unfortunately, this was still not enough.  
Dark Link had come close to crippling him, certainly closer than any other opponent before now. Having broken several of Links' ribs with a manoeuvre delivered at a near-incomprehensible speed, this coupled with the bruises, lacerations and viciously inflicted, heavily bleeding wounds across his body was all taking a massive toll upon the utterly drained Hylian. What remaining physical power Links' frame possessed had long since been sapped by this fight and those past, and the grinding torment of his shattered bones and ripped, slickly wet flesh was not shared by his doppelganger. Dark Link seemed to be motivated by pure hellfire in his veins; as though what he had told Link of his own place in the world and his tremendous need to be free of it was slowly poisoning him from within – his mouth, fangs still glinting with their own razor-like sharpness, was contorted into a primal growl, and that poison in him seemed to be eliminating all traces of fatigue from his body with the ruthlessness of a plague through the bloodstream.  
With each swing of his blade, every thrust of his fist and lash of his booted leg, that shaded doppelganger seemed to be increasing in his awful, feral ferocity, as if every second that Link remained standing was intolerable to his very being – what final, lingering scraps of doubt Link had to the veracity of Dark Link's words were being swept aside with brutal force; and for all Link's valiant efforts at fighting back, at holding his ground, Dark Link was coming horribly close to granting that wish.

Within minutes, Link's faltering strength failed him twice over - the first barely avoided strike carving a deep gash across the Hero's left cheek in a splatter of crimson. The pulsing flow of the blood that drenched most of Link's face was a hot and viscous stream, a stinging in his eye and a morbid, salty cordial down his bone-dry throat. The second was a merciless high kick to his chest that sent him reeling back, choking desperately, willing his lungs  
(_surely he's punctured them this time_)  
to keep going, and he barely brought his blade arm up in time to defend against the advantage Dark Link pressed without mercy.  
"You will die here and now, Link!" He screamed, that same frantic, desperate need burning fiercest of all the flames in his eyes, as their weapons ground together and the steel shrieked in protest. "And when you do, finally, I'll have my freedom! Freedom from watching your every move, suffering each waking moment that I'm forced to feed off your darkness, your love and lust for blood and war and death!"  
An indefinable anger shot through Link at these words, and he struck back, yielding his shoulder to the force of his counterpart's push, twisting to avoid the touch of the blade and lashing out with his own shield, slamming into that dark, pointed nose and breaking it with a hideous _crack  
_(_how many times has that happened to me in battle before?_)  
that rang out so loud as to sound utterly unreal. With a tremendous heave of his entire upper body that seemed to sap his energy like the suction of a Like-Like upon the skin, Link shoved his cringing doppelganger backwards and away, using the brief reprieve to gather himself and steady his own footing.  
Dark Link skidded backward and stopped some feet away, his boots splashing through the water at his feet in swiftly vanishing ripples.

Their gazes locked.  
The growl that issued from Dark Link's throat was awful to hear.  
"I will _have_ death, Link, and you will not stop me."  
He hefted himself to warrior stance once more, ready to charge again.  
"With you dead there will be nothing left, no shadow in your soul to fuel me and I will vanish for good. I _will_ have that, Link. I will _kill you,_ and I will be at peace at last."  
Doing his utmost to conceal his exhaustion, keeping Zelda's smile glowing anew in the windows of his mind, he found words for that anger, and the nerve and courage to bellow back in a voice as rough as gravel underfoot;  
"And when I die here, and you have that peace you seem to desire so much, the world dies with us both! Hyrule will fall forever under Ganondorf!"  
Dark Link said nothing for a long moment. In that moment, all the frenzy in his attitude seemed to dissipate, as though the water in his eyes from that smashed nose had quenched their fire. Blood dripped steadily from the wreckage of his nostrils.  
Link said nothing more, his breathing coming in wheezing hitches, as he stared at his impossible mirror image, waiting for what was to come next.

And then, in a voice so low as to be a whisper, Dark Link spoke one last time.  
"I don't care, Link. Hyrule and all the people across it can burn in torment forevermore... maybe then they can understand how I've lived all my life, because I will not suffer through it any longer. I'm sorry for what will happen to all those you fought for. But this is going to end now, for the both of us."

He attacked, for the last time.

In a blinding whirl of movement, Dark Link swung his arm back and then forth again, launching his shield free of his gauntlet at Link in a horizontal blur, like a gigantic steel boomerang flying forth to decapitate him.  
Link threw his own shield out just in time, and as their identical edges struck together in a deafening _clang_ and he felt something within his arm snap from the force of impact, he saw that black-clad shape before him leap high above with the Shadow Sword held aloft and shining with its own killing light, curving through the air to deliver onto his distracted form a strike that would carve his head clean in two down the centre.  
And as the shield toppled away and clattered across the surface of the water, out of his vision and of his thoughts, and as Dark Link arched through the mists of the air in the silent hall of battle towards him, his red eyes set in burning determination, Link forgot all he had ever learned of a warrior's focus and his cold intent, all his physical pain emptied itself from his awareness and every corner of his consciousness was filled only with all those whom he loved and who loved him and believed in him, The Hero of Time, in return, and as they consumed his thoughts completely and he threw his sword out and up in a despairing final bid to defend himself, he screamed out a cry, an agonised, desperate cry, a wordless plea that he would survive through this for the sake of all those who hoped in their heart of hearts that he would succeed -;

The sound of a sword penetrating flesh, piercing through vitals like a knife through hot butter and bursting out through flesh again, is a sickeningly liquid sound.

In a hall of absolute silence that generates impossible things from deep within the cold touch of its mists, that sound is as loud and terrible as a death-knell.

Dark Link's sword dropped off to the side of Link's form, its murderous glimmer fading away from existence.  
They stood upright, their weight pressed against each other and their chins set against the others shoulder, as like in a stiff embrace... and Link could feel the warm, slick flow of blood slowly soaking the lower torso of his tunic... and it was the blood of Dark Link, pulsing slowly and steadily from his stomach, where the Master Sword had impaled him as cleanly and totally as the thrust of a spear.

Their breath, ragged from their torn throats and choked from their tearing scars of war, reverberated deep within each others pointed ears for some time.  
Then, Dark Link moved back, a mere few inches away, and scarlet eyes met azure eyes in a steady gaze of frozen shock.  
Link watched that face in silent disbelief, not even registering the full import of his supposed victory, as he saw Dark Link's face  
(_is this me, in death to come?_)  
shift and contract; his mouth twitching atop fangs now robbed of their glint and gleam and devoid of all their bloodlust as the agony of the wound snaked through every inch of him, as the lip around the wound continued to pour his lifeblood into the welcoming water in a slow stream of dark crimson and the cold of the blades' magic chilled the very scraps of bone and flesh and organ that it had so easily shred to pieces. The sword had buried itself down to the hilt, and the long tip shone silver where, soaked in blood, it was exposed through his hunching back.  
He stared back once more into Link's eyes, and Link saw a terrible fear flitting through them, that fear of death he had seen in the eyes of so many before. Another twinge of the muscles and that fear was suddenly gone, discarded and forgotten and uncared for; he saw something new mix itself in with the palette of dreadful pain in those irises, and this time it was despair and regret that cut harsher than even this killing stroke could ever have done, for he was not truly to die, and this struggle had been for nothing. Another twitch, and now there was... there was...

And what Link saw now astonished him beyond anything else he had seen before.

Dark Link's eyes drifted upwards, away from Link's face, but not to roll back in the throes of death as he might have expected – his gaze had fixed on some indefinable but definite point that only he could see off in the fathomless distance beyond, and his face was filled not with pain or suffering or rage anymore. It was a face shining with awe and wonder – as though what he alone saw in the mists beyond was akin to the gift of sight to a blind man or speech to a life-long mute.  
What Link saw there was gratitude – it could not be mistaken. It was gratitude.  
And as his face, a face as Link's own, registered this, and a sound that was surely a laugh issued from his throat, degenerating into the quiet hack of a cough that brought up with a thick gout of blood from within and dripped down his chin and neck, Dark Link toppled backwards, slipping without pause off the Master sword and dropping the Shadow Sword onto the water's surface where it came to rest with eerie quickness...and then it's wielder fell softly against the bright and shimmering surface with a splash muted by his bloody tunic, the ripples expanding outwards and disappearing into stillness and nothing once more.  
Link stood, almost motionless, with the orchestra of injuries and the bolero of pain they played in his own body once again forgotten, subsumed completely by his own incomprehension. His entire body trembled, almost imperceptibly, with aftershock, and his hacking, forced breathing was slowing down, as he tried to force his body to calm itself. His grip on the Master Sword, now streaked and splattered from hilt to tip in blood, was so tight his knuckles must surely have been ghostly white beneath the leather of the gauntlets around them.

Dark Link broke the silence, as he lay there, his eyes still aglow with wonderment.  
"Oh..." His voice caught and he coughed again, but even as he winced against the pain and another spurt of blood escaped his throat, his eyes did not lose whatever it was they saw.  
"Oh... my... Link, can you... can you see this? What I can... see?"  
It came again; that pity he had felt so strongly for his shadowed counterpart – it came back to him once more, but this time its flowed through him like a flood, tidal in its power, and suddenly he found the Master Sword dropping free of his hand to fall in opposing symmetry with the Shadow Sword, and he found himself falling to his own knees to his doppelgangers' side. Whether he wanted to try and tend to the surely fatal wound, or offer some consolation, some comfort, he could not say.  
All he knew was that suddenly their gauntleted hands had locked together, their grips hard and strong, as though Link was refusing to allow his counterpart to fade away into whatever ethereal plane it was that he could see stretched out before him within the mists above and at all sides.  
He heard himself whispering, and was amazed at the comforting tone his whisper held.  
"What is it? What can you see?"  
Dark Link continued to stare, and now there was a small by definite smile was on his face, so much stronger than the twinges of agony that tugged at his features without effect. Beneath him, the water was becoming a spreading ripple of pinkish red.

"I can see the end..." he said softly, his voice low and wondrous. "You, Link... I can see my end... you've given it to me... and I _can_ have that peace..."  
His grip on Link's gauntlet tightened further, and suddenly he was looking Link in the eye again, and his expression could only be described as enraptured.  
"You've won, Link... for the first time, a warrior has faced... their shadow, and been victorious. I can see... it, Link. The creature that spawned me into this world...sent me here, this day..."  
His breath was growing short, and sharp.  
"It's dying, and I with it... your victory... your power... the goodness in that heart of yours... they've destroyed it completely and it's passing away... in agony..."  
He laughed, and there was no malice in his mirth this time; there was a happiness, a contentment that shone so brightly it was bringing tears to both their eyes.

"Oh, I can see it all, Link... you've won the day... triumphed where no-one ever... has before... you've faced...your sins, and the light in your heart... has defeated the shadow..."  
He continued to gaze at Link, and his eyes were welling with shining tears of gratitude, of thanks, of relief and happiness for the grace he had now found for himself – or that Link had granted him, if what he said was true.  
"Link, you've set... me free. The creature that birthed me...and all those others past... is dead, destroyed...by your hand..."  
Link's own eyes, awash with tears that sparkled with relief for the battle's end, with pity for the dying figure spread out beneath him and gripping his hand so tightly, and with what he thought was a happiness that he could not quite define yet, stared back into Dark Link's own just as steadily.  
"What do you mean?" was all he could ask, his question soft and catching in his throat.  
Dark Link's smile widened, even as his breath became shorter still and chest began to shudder with dreadful convulsiveness.

"I can't... be... any clearer, Link. This day you've triumphed, for the first time in so long... not for the love... of war... but for the love of those...in your heart. It's...destroyed... the darkness... here." His scarlet eyes closed against the pain all of a sudden, and now Link found both his other hand atop Dark Link's own as well, and desperation and sorrow was atop him now, sorrow for the death of this warrior beneath his grip. Feeling the clutch of his hands, Dark Link let out another hacking chuckle.  
"It's... too late, Link... it's too late and I'm... glad. I have my freedom... to die and be... at peace at last..."

There was only soft thankfulness in his eyes now, and they were breathtaking to behold.

Link felt a sob well up in his chest and barely forced it down. He had to remain strong and steadfast, if only to be there for the man slowly and certainly dying on the surface of this unreal place he had stumbled upon and battled for his very soul... where he had faced his demons and his darkness and had emerged with new hope in that which he had fought for. That which he still had to fight for.  
He put a hand up to Dark Link's temple, trying to soothe the horrendous anguish that was engulfing his counterpart faster and faster by the second, cupping his forehead in a futile gesture of comfort.

He looked sadly into that face. His own face. He looked deep into the features that mirrored his own so exactly, so precisely and now he felt an identical thankfulness, a swelling gratitude for what this remarkable being had taught him, that filled him so deeply that he felt his eyes may overflow in a stream of grateful tears.  
"Thank you." He whispered to Dark Link. "Thank you for... for what you've done. You've reminded me of things I should never have forgotten...

"Thank you, Dark."

Dark's smile only broadened at this, the sound of his own new and separate title, and it was glowing through the convulsive spasms that were wracking his chest and his face. He reached out with his left hand and gripped Link's shoulder gently, pulling himself upwards and ignoring what was surely a wrenching torment ripping through his insides.

For the last time, he looked Link straight in the eye. Red and blue glowed like ruby and sapphire.  
"You... truly are... a great... warrior... and a true hero, Link..." he gasped with concerted, straining effort. He pulled himself up just a little further still, and Link put his arm around his doppelgangers back, supporting his limp body. For the briefest moment their ragged lips brushed together, and the simple gesture, so often a merely perfunctory expression of respect between warriors in this world, was one full of most sincere admiration and respect for each other, more powerful than the sternest of salutes. They broke apart, and Link saw Dark's eyes close against a final wave of the brief and meaningless physical anguish that would finally set him free, and Link did not even try to hold back the tears now.

"Never... forget. Never... forget... those who... you... must win for..."  
He gasped, only once.

"And... Link..."  
His face slackened, his muscles relaxing.

"...thank... you... Link."

Dark Link exhaled his last breath with a slowness that seemed to span an eternity. His head rolled gently back on his neck, and in that eternity, he died.

And Link, Hero of Time, victor of the war between light and shadow, was crouched in this plain between the realities, holding the lifeless, shadowy body of his own image in his arms, weeping silent tears that dropped into the crystalline depths of the unreal water beneath him, and disappeared in a trembling, shimmering ripple all of their very own.

* * *

Once again, all my thanks to you, good reader, for sticking with this tale. A brief closing epilogue is coming shortly and the first in the Ocarinaverse series will be complete - please drop any opinions you may have, whatever they are, and thank you one more time!


	9. Epilogue: Redemption In Remembrance

Here it is my fellow Fan Fic lovers; the final chapter of Light & Shadow Collide: Union of the Blades!!

I can't express how happy I am to have finally re-stoked my passion for writing and got this story completed at last, and for the last time I hope you will enjoy the concluding events that unfold here. Be sure to drop a review if you so wish, my thanks to you all!

**

* * *

**

**Epilogue: Redemption In Remembrance**

A short while later, there was a rustling, fluttering noise, and the sound was as small and soft as the wings that produced them were delicate and fair. The sound was unobtrusive, only a mere few decibels above silent, and as such they did little to disrupt the flood of private grief pouring out a few feet away.  
On the sandy isle set in the midst of these strange arena, at the dead foot of the gaunt and wasted tree in its exact centre, Navi the fairy was stirring out of her long spell of unconsciousness, her tiny features wincing against the throbbing aches that consumed all of her body from the attack that had removed her from the battle, an attack that seemed as though it had happened days ago, for all Link knew in his stricken mind. With cautious slowness she tested her frail, spindly wings, finding that lifting gently and silently off the ground into the air once more caused her no greater degree of dull, insistent pain.  
Her light returned shortly after; the bright and shining radiance that emanated magically from her body began to glow anew as her mind cleared from its cloud of disorientation – and she remembered where she was, as memory surged back to her in one great whirling storm of images.  
She whipped around, her wings tinkling like a miniscule bell, and cried out "Lin-"  
It was her turn for astonishment, for what she had, even briefly, experienced of that battle would not have led her to believe that what she saw was the ultimate outcome of that ferocious conflict.

What she saw was the man who, before a single blow took her away from the fight into darkness and unawareness for what could have been hours, had fought with the vicious, single-minded coldness and detachment against a foe who had battled with a terrifying likewise focus, and who was now holding the body of that foe in his arms not as a towering triumphant but as a man who seemed to have been broken more harshly by that death than any wound could ever have achieved. And as Link and Navi's gazes met, and she saw how his eyes overflowed so with tears of grief and sorrow, she held her silence, and trusted that she would understand when Link was able to tell her what had happened to make this death so terrible for him.  
She could not press him now. Whatever the cause of his torment, it was too near for him, and could well be for a long time to come.  
And so Navi simply fluttered slowly to her partner's shoulder, pressing her soothing, healing touch to his scarred and battered forehead, watching in compassionate silence as he cradled the unmoving body so like his own in his arms, the blood from what must surely be the killing strike now a cloud of deepening red on the water's clear and bright surface.

Link felt what he imagined was a dim glimmer of relief when he saw, through clouded eyes, his friend rise back into the air again without any true signs of pain or injury, and in some corner of his mind, he was glad to know she had returned to his side again.  
She was right in guessing that he could not have explained how things had come to be this way in the time she had laid unconsciousness on the battle's sidelines. For him, the grief at this death – the death of the man who had shown him the inverse of himself and helped him survive it, helped him remember all those who prayed for his safety and victory against the Evil King – this was grief that was not simply too near, but overwhelming, and utterly unbearable.  
That same corner of his mind, where a ray of light shone bright against the dark shadow of sorrow and would in time grow strong once more, brought his thoughts back to what this had meant for Dark Link, what peace and freedom it had finally given him. He supposed in that way, he could find some happiness, some gladness, in this outcome, but not now. Not for a long time to come yet.  
And so he wept, some tears shed for what terrible thing he may have become without the lesson this unbelievable creature had given to him, some for the sheer weight of the burden that was still upon him and would remain upon him until the bitter end, some for those he hoped still to save from what awful fate was planned for them by the hordes of Ganondorf's imagination, and some simply shed in gratitude to the man in his arms, and sorrow for the price this teaching had come at.

His tears, jewel-bright and pure as whitest snow, softly fell with quiet _plinks_ into the water he knelt upon.

And all around them, the world began to change.

* * *

Link will remember this moment for the rest of his days.  
The power has purified this place that Link and Navi now stand in, and now, it is the reason that the connection between that terrible reality and the land of Hyrule is now severed and the reason the unreality of their surroundings is vanishing before their eyes.  
As Link lays the body of Dark Link down into the water, the water shifts, shimmers, fades...and disappears, and in its place the deep blue stone of the Water Temple can be seen, the unmistakeable intricacy of its patterns as clear as morning sunshine.  
As he looks around in amazement, as the chill touch of the water beneath his feet slips into nothingness and he feels the solid touch of stone beneath his feet again, he sees the sandy isle, and the dead tree standing in final salute, as they also vanish away into the ethers of the surrounding mists that could be endlessly in their depth...and then they _too _begin to swirl, to shrink backwards, to draw inwards on themselves until nothing is eventually left, and suddenly the azure walls of the Temple are there as though such has always been so – and a great blue shape has descended from and through the vanishing mists above to form the ceiling of a rectangular hall that could look no less like the infinite place before than the imagination could ever conceive of.  
And then they look down, and the body of Dark Link has gone as well. He has vanished without trace, his spirit and his essence now at one with all the world, at peace at last. Just as he so dearly wanted.

And before either Link or Navi can say a word to each other in astonishment, they see the Master Sword.  
They see it shine so brightly, as the blood that has soaked it washes itself clean away without a sound.  
Behind them, iron bars grind upwards, and the door set in that great marble arch, its stone flawlessly white and pure, slowly opens to allow the Hero of Time to carry along his great and long road.

He is still for only a moment.  
And then, with tears for the man who has taught him so much shimmering brightly in his beautiful, newly awakened blue eyes, Link turns, and he and Navi set forth once again.

Not in the name of war, nor bloodshed, nor death.  
But in the name of love. Love for everyone in this world, and for everyone, no matter what misleading darkness etches their features, who has believed in Link, the only man who can save Hyrule.

For love, into the unknown, he marches.

* * *

Dear Reader.

Know this.

There is power in the world, magic greater than all the spells and enchantment and charms that can ever be cast by even the most remarkable of sorcerers, magic with more might than all the power and strength imbued in any weapon anywhere in any land, magic more powerful than all of these things combined a thousand times over.  
It is not the power of the sword in a man's hand, and it is not measured by the number of killing strikes that a sword rains down upon those who face it.

It is the power of our intent, of what we hope shall come to pass by the move our hand plays to the world.  
It is the magic that fills our intent behind our actions, the power that determines the purity and courage of our hearts.  
And it is this magic that has saved the Hero of Time from a descent into shadow-lined voids of the conscience, where the only worth one may attain is by the ferocity of their strike.  
It is this magic that filled Links' desperate final actions to save the world he so loves to the tip-top with a light so powerful and so bright it blinded and consumed whole the creature, hidden in the darkness of unreality, that has watched every being in Hyrule since time immemorial, feasting upon the shadows in their thoughts and minds and hearts.  
It is the magic that that has cleansed his soul and allowed him to begin afresh, and it is the magic that has freed a tortured soul into the sweet arms of a death and a peace he has longed for since he was forced into the world and made to suffer for every moment of his existence.

It is this magic that is in us all, and through the intentions behind our actions do we unlock this power and let it touch us and the world around us, sending our spirits soaring to the skies above, granting us the power to do anything.

May this magic find you, forevermore, as it has finally found Link, the Hero of Time.

**THE END.**

"_Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of __redemption__ lies in remembrance."  
_(Richard Von Wiezsaecker)

* * *

And with that, I draw the first of many tales in my Ocarinaverse story to a close.  
One last time I'd like to thank anyone and everyone who has and will read this tale - all the support I've received has been nothing short of fantastic. Any and all new reviews are always appreciated - My hailz to you all now and forever!


	10. Author Notes

**Author's Notes**

Well everyone, I've finally completed a long and epic struggle to get one single Legend of Zelda fanfic complete, in the midst of a hailstorm of back luck ranging from job losses to lack of job availabilities, and other such things that can seriously sap the leisure time out of one's life.

As such, I'm glad that 'Light & Shadow Collide: Union of the Blades' is finally over – the story has been little short of a labour (literally) of love for me and I'm overjoyed with the positive feedback the tale received. While I know it's ostentatious and kinda sad to post a chapter comprising entirely of author's notes and comments upon the story, I simply feel that that I'd like to have some of the things that inspired me to write this tale down on the page for all to see, and perhaps to understand the story a little better.

Anyone disappointed by the lack of fiction material or a little irritated by my choosing to post a 'chapter' like this, you are most welcome to turn away now, I shan't be offended haha, and my apologies to you all! For the rest of you good people, onwards to business...

* * *

When I began the story, I initially intended it to be fairly simplistic, and at least 10,000 words shorter than it ultimately ended up being. The conflict between Dark Link and Link in the sub-boss battle arena has fascinated me ever since I first played 'Ocarina...' at the tender age of 10, more so for the setting of the battle than anything else. The bizarre, somewhat unreal location was extraordinarily evocative and unique amidst the themed stylings of the dungeons, and has stuck in my imagination ever since.

When I considered what I wanted to connote with the story, the idea that struck me hardest of all was the theme of the EFFECT of war, not war itself. For purposes of realism I was making the world around Link ten times larger than it's depicted in the game (with his journeys taking days upon days to complete), and I began to think – what would a person on such a quest really be thinking about the goal that has been handed down to them from those above him? How would it affect him physically, mentally, emotionally? More importantly, I reasoned, was the next question – how would someone constantly engaged, with such ingrained focus and dedication to killing in close-quarter sword combat, be truly affected by the blood they had split, even if it was not innocent? How would it affect (or more accurately damage) their psyche?

After this point came up I was instantly attracted to the notion of Dark Link being a literal reflection to Link in every way, but that he was not an inverse creature so to speak – he was not a creature who inverted Link's inherent goodness into darkness and pitted the two against each other, as the game seems to suggest. If the Link of this story was to be a broken, battle-scarred man with all sorts of heavy emotional baggage and dark secrets accumulated from his endless embroilment in war, then Dark Link couldn't work as a inversion, as Link was not pure enough.

The idea of a hero being a person of outward goodness but full of sinister flaws has always fascinated me, and it allowed me to take a new direction with Dark Link – if Link himself was essentially a good man with flaws, wouldn't Dark Link become more interesting if Dark Link amplified these flaws? In this way I had an interpretation of Dark Link that's hardly new but still workable – it isn't good and evil that is put together but the good aspects of the spirit against the dark aspects. This not only gives the story a less straightforward, and more thought-provoking, angle, and serves to make Dark Link a more personal menace to Link – he is confronting his own darkness, and the idea of being unable to defeat that is far more terrifying than a Stalfos swinging a sword in your eye.

After this idea came to fruition my imagination went promptly beserk.

It seemed to me that such an interpretation of Dark Link made conventional ideas about origin redundant; he can't be a creature made by the primary antagonist Ganondorf, who has not had the personal interaction with Link that would be needed to pick out his emotional pitfalls and use them against him. I then turned my attention to the room itself that the battle occurs in, desperate to utilise its ethereal and sinister design to my advantage.

After some thinking I hit upon the idea that the room itself is, in short, not of Hyrule, but a bridge between realities where a person must take on their own darkness if they wish to pass through.

As anyone reading this will be thinking, that idea sucks, sounding far too much like a cheap rip-off of Bizarro world characters from DC Comics. So I turned to.... the Bible. Oh yeah.

Taking a great deal of inspiration from New Testament descriptions of Satan, I took the notion of an expanded world further by adding in the scariest kind of antagonist – an unseen one. Retaining the idea of the room being on another plane of existence to Link's world, I imagined a creature that had many aspects of the Christian devil. Remaining unnamed throughout the story, this entity has the ability to observe the actions and thoughts of every single creature in the known world, feeding off of their dark actions, impulses and desires, no matter how secret they may be. With the idea about the hall itself being a place of confrontation remaining in place, I decided that the room is where the entity manifests these dark thoughts into a physical being – in Link's case, Dark Link – and forces the arrival into a literal confrontation with their own sins. Call me high-minded, but I loved this idea, and the decidedly religious overtones seemed to add to its impact a great deal.

As such, I was intent on putting my description-heavy writing style to good use – the story had to be metaphorically powerful if it was to have any impact.

The two partitions that surround the entrance and exit doors in the story are perhaps the most blatant uses of symbolism in the story. The marble around the entrance is filthy, coated with grime and dirt, whilst the stone of the exit is gleaming, clean, and purest white, the concept being that the entrance represents a man tainted with sin entering a purgatory and the exit shows a man leaving that purgatory, washed clean of his sins and a better person because of it. My apologies for being so unimaginatively blatant, haha!.

The dead tree in the centre of the room was there, in my mind, for a purpose I didn't want to specify. Link's fear of his surroundings builds as he gets closer to the tree and subsides as he goes past it, like a living game of 'Hotter/Colder.' Why is this happening? Could it possibly be that this tree is the physical version of the evil entity described earlier? Is it giving off resonating energy – a likely theory considering that Dark Link appears right next to it? Or is it simply a creepy, dead tree? That I leave for you all to decide.

As for the violence in the story, I made the decision that it was thematically right to make it as explicit as it was. While it might seem unnecessary to describe a Dodongo's head being blown to pieces, Tektites being eviscerated, Dark Link being impaled and to include general scenes of torture, I felt that it not only made the story (in a sense) more realistic, but it made the idea of Link having to confront his own sins more tenable – you can't be shocked at the horrors you've committed when they don't sound repulsively horrific.

Dark Link himself grew as I wrote the story, and the massive gap between writing times gave me a chance to look at his motivations and discard what were at the start of the story less developed ideas.

I decided that if Dark Link was a creature with his (to an extent) genetic basis in Link's inherent darkness, he was still a little one dimensional if he was simply out to pit that darkness against Link to see if Link was strong enough to overcome it. After a good deal of deliberation, I decided that this one-dimensionality would not do at all (heehee).

I expanded upon the idea of the entity producing a shadowy reflection of a person when it encounters them, deciding that these creatures are 'born' in a powerless but self-aware (and thus individually minded) state, in spirit form on another plane of being, at the same time their real-world counterparts are born. These shadows are condemned to watch over their living counterparts from birth to death, and they are fuelled (perhaps unwillingly) and strengthened by the darkness hidden in the actions and thoughts of their real-world selves. While this idea functioned by giving Dark Link a degree of individual self-awareness and thus his own individual opinions and thoughts, it didn't truly work until I set on the idea that this process of 'strengthening' by absorbing darkness and sin would be perpetually torturous and agonising – if Link has entered purgatory here, it is nothing on Dark Link, who has lived in hell all his life and has finally been given a chance to free himself from it. He cannot kill himself since Link's continuing existence and darkness would resurrect him, and he does not simply allow Link to kill him out of a combination of a sense of honour of his own, and that he is fuelled by anger at Link for making him, indirectly, what he is.

Finally, I had found his motivation, and his thematic and emotional development had grown far better than I had even hoped for. The ending even gained a degree of plausibility that my initial immaturity prevented – Link's own emotional story arc is resolved by his coming to terms with the killing machine he is in deadly danger of becoming, and learns to remember those who he fights for and loves not only in moments of exhaustion in a manner that could almost be described as begrudging, but when he puts his very life on the line – he remembers his true reasons and remembers only too well the horrors that will occur if he does not succeed, and he even comes to respect and honour the man who serves as this unlikeliest of mentors. Dark Link, for his part, is given the peace he desires – because Link's victory over the entity is a magically potent act that none have ever achieved before, he has freed Dark Link by destroying the creature permanently. Under these circumstances even the childish, initially yaoi-influenced kiss at the end of the story seemed to work – the yaoi influence was scrapped in favour of including the kiss to reference to classical mythology and even Christian stories, where a kiss is intended to have respectful connotations rather than erotic ones. It was implausible to have Dark Link and Link express affection, but it was certainly workable to have them feel a deep sense of gratitude to each other for what the other has done for them.

* * *

And thusly, I complete my discussion on the themes and ideas behind this particular piece of work – I have always loved dissecting the written word and seeing what lies beneath, and I hope you, dear reader, think a little higher of my story as a result. Once again I apologise sincerely for even posting this, but I do sincerely hope you've enjoyed what you've read in this tale - if you wish to talk further on any of these ideas you can either drop me a review on the story or send me a message via my fanfiction profile page. My hailz to all the wonderful fanfic writers and readers out there, thank you all once again!!


End file.
